[section8joe]

My mom bought a cd that you are only allowed to copy once. It has some weird privacy software on it. Somehow she copied it with windows media player and she can't get the songs into itunes. She has a dell computer. Is there a way that I can rip the songs onto my pb and then copy onto her dell?

[DMBand0026]

That's not possible. The CD may install what is the equivalent of a virus or spyware on a computer upon being inserted in that will only allow it to be copied once to that specific computer, but there's no way to modify the actual CD to tell it that it can't be copied more than once onto multiple computers.

Is the disk a Sony record? You should call/write/email whoever released the CD (the record company/distributor) and inform them that you won't be buying their products anymore until they stop putting spyware and viruses on your computer.

[section8joe]

It's a capital records disc. This is the link to the site on the back of the disc. http://emimusic.info/

[Dorian Gray]

Sony has stated that it will replace all of the approximately 2.1 million "rootkit"-infected CDs sold. I really hope this fiasco will teach some top Sony executives a lesson, but I fear it will only make them switch to a DRM solution from a different company (First4Internet Ltd is obviously clueless, though who could have possibly guessed with a name like that?!).

The music industry is incredibly depressing at the moment. Just a few years ago going into HMV for my weekly CD was something I looked forward to; now I feel dirty giving the Big Four money and spend most of my music money on second-hand vinyl. The first CD I remember refusing to buy because of DRM was Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy, an astonishing work of art from a band that I've been infatuated with for an uncommonly long period of time (eight years). Neil Hannon is probably the best living song-writer and I wish I could support him, but I won't while his label thinks it's okay to fuck with my listening experience. As for Apple's iTMS: ha!

To actually answer your question, the CD doesn't know how many times it's been copied, of course. Software automatically installed on your computer keeps that record. It's more than likely a Mac will allow you to do whatever you want with the CD (a useful side-effect of owning a Mac these days). In that case you can import the music into your iTunes library, copy the AAC/MP3 files directly from your iTunes music library folder in the Finder onto a CD or USB drive, then add them to your mother's iTunes library from within her copy of iTunes. There are other ways of copying between computers but this way preserves all the metadata.

Please also take fifteen minutes to write a hand-written letter to the label in question. Do not send an email: as Sir Bob Geldof recently said, emails "give a feeling of action, which is a mistake".

[Engine Joe]

Dorian - I don't know if a person can play - let alone rip - a CD from EMI on a Mac these days. I bought an EMI CD from Amazon.co.uk, and the Mac simply rejects it after trying to read it.

[SKMDC]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Sony has stated that it will replace all of the approximately 2.1 million "rootkit"-infected CDs sold. Please also take fifteen minutes to write a hand-written letter to the label in question. Do not send an email: as Sir Bob Geldof recently said, emails "give a feeling of action, which is a mistake".

Not to take issue with Sir Bob but the whole turnaround in this CBS/BMG nonsense has been because of the web. If you were to have written a letter on the day the story broke it would probably still be sitting in a undelivered mail bin in the sorting room.

I agree writing a letter is an important for the larger picture as a whole, but it
needs to be written to your Congressional Representative and Senators telling them that they should be looking after you, not a multinational.
After all, it's for their own good, most media companies revenue streams come from places that they were opposed to being allowed to exist in the first place! it's not a visionary lot.